Can I Play With Madness
Iron Maiden
The release of Seventh Son of a Seventh Son showed me that Maiden were not just going to churn out the same fucking album over and over again. It was very different to what we were used to and it was awesome, in some parts it was even starting to sound a bit like Jethro Tull which was quite a departure from the albums before. The evolution of sound was quite radical, so radical in fact that when it appeared they may have got cold feet and tried to get back to their more classic sound with No Prayer For the Dying, guitarist Adrian Smith decided it was time to leave. His view was that Seventh Son was more in line with where they should be heading even if it wasn’t as successful commercially.
I was in the army at the time this came out and in the short space of time I had been there Metal had changed quite radically. I wasn’t prepared for what I found in Hillbrow at the Irish Club one night where I played this album hot off the press i.e. that in the eyes of the youth Maiden were dinosaurs. Thankfully they did not meet their extinction but would carry on forever.
JAMES DAUBENEY